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The City of Houston and Houston First are planning to close Polk Street to expand the GRB Convention Center.
The expansion is funded through Hotel Occupancy Taxes (HOT) - which come from hotels and short term rentals (STRs) like AirBNB. The communities that will be shut off from downtown will help pay for the expansion through their STRs!
People for Polk believes this is inherently unfair.
We are is a coalition of volunteer community members, small business owners, and other Houston stakeholders who recognize the value of Polk Street and are working hard to preserve it.
Together, we can and will save Polk!
Polk Today
Polk Today
Polk provides a direct route for drivers, buses, bicyclists, pedestrians, and emergency vehicles.
GRB Expansion
GRB Expansion
If the GRB expansion closes Polk, all traffic will have to make a long, permanent detour. Pedestrian trips will be all but impossible.
The Great GRB Wall will stretch 2,400 feet - That's 8 football fields!
Future TxDOT
Future TxDOT
TxDOT is currently proposing to connect Polk with a short U-turn. Furthermore, a Polk bridge may be possible - but only if Polk remains open!
Frequently asked questions (click for the answer!)
Frequently asked questions (click for the answer!)
Isn't TxDOT planning to close Polk street anyway with the IH69/IH45 freeway project?
TxDOT has repeatedly said that they are not proposing to close Polk. They have design challenges to accommodate a direct bridge, but they are planning to mitigate that with convenient U-Turns on the future frontage roads. P4P thinks they can do even better, and we are continuing to work with them to reevaluate a bridge option. If the section of Polk is closed for the expansion of the GRB, a Polk bridge will never be possible.
Isn't the City proposing to convert Leeland to 2-way operations, and won't that be good enough?
P4P believes that converting Leeland to 2-way operations may be a good idea in addition to maintaining Polk Street. The fact is, east-west connectivity is so poor in this part of town that any additional connections would be highly valuable. However, the connectivity provided by Leeland does not replace Polk, because Leeland crosses a busy rail line near Cullen whereas Polk has an underpass. Polk also extends far east to Wayside and west to Bagby, whereas Leeland dead-ends into Louisiana and the west and veers southeast on the east. Finally, it's not clear that the Leeland bridge over IH69 currently is wide enough to even accommodate the conversion.
The biggest challenge, however, is the timing. How long will it take to convert Leeland Street? Will it happen before the Polk closure? We still don't know, but it seems unlikely.
Won't the full build-out of the GRB vision will build a beautiful park connection that will improve east-west connectivity?
In short, NO. The future GRB videos and pictures do look nice, and the park connection, if built, will be a nice commodity. However, it will not provide vehicle connectivity, so if you are driving or riding a bus, or if you are EMT or a firefighter rushing to a disaster, then that connection will not serve you.
It also won’t happen any time soon. It will only be finished once the massive TxDOT NHHIP project is finished - and that won’t be until the late 2030s at best. Until that point, we will have lost the driving, emergency, walking, transit, and biking connections that Polk currently provides.
It is also worth noting: the future vision is not funded. There is no guarantee that it will actually ever happen. It is also not clear if there is any mechanism by which we can guarantee that a future administration 15-20 years from now will follow through on the promises of current officials.
It feels like there may be an expression for this. Maybe: trading a bird in hand. . .for a pie in the sky?
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